3 ms·

>No, because they can do the same withyour last game. It's called a level playing field, which is clearly a foreign concept to the people who work at Uber. And

>No, because they can do the same withyour last game. It's called a level playing field, which is clearly a foreign concept to the people who work at Uber. And Lyft can access Uber's API, unless they're scrupulously avoiding doing so for legal reasons, which doesn't seem all that likely. There's a lot of stuff that is technically illegal, but we'd all be paralyzed if we followed the letter of the law (or every contract we sign) precisely. I'm sure Lyft and Uber BOTH understand this, as they're both generally operating in direct violation of local taxi regulations. It's funny to read so many people acting like violating a ToS is some moral horror, apparently unaware that the ToS is routinely violated by normal usage, and that like most contracts, they're intentionally written that way. The goal of this, as all contracts, is to a) have a reason to sue someone they dislike and b) have a defense against suits from someone that dislikes them. Since the user has no individual/direct bargaining power, the contract will always be massively favorable to the company. Businesses sue each other for breach of contract all the time. It could even be argued that this is not fundamentally immoral, which is why it's a civil matter; disagreements in business will sometimes occur, and resorting to the civil dispute resolution system that's in place for exactly this reason is not necessarily a sign of malfeasance. No one reads ToS except lawyers, and then only when they're looking for something to sue over and/or decide how much likely they're going to get sued. Like most contracts, it doesn't become a consideration until something goes south. In the football analogy, the opposing team could easily concoct a situation where a ToS prevents an opposing team member from watching the video of the game by creating an interstitial landing page that says "You must agree to the Terms to view this site", the person checking OK, and then viewing the video that technically was prefixed by mandatory agreement to a document that buried language like "This video must not be used against us in any way." under 50 paragraphs of boilerplate. This is unfair because they were able to say "Please don't compete with us, k?" in a potentially technically legally-binding way? Come on now. >There's more to competition than the zero-sum variety. OK? It's not zero-sum just because some are happy and some are sad.

anigbrowl 10y ago
There's a lot of stuff that is technically illegal, but we'd all be paralyzed if we followed the letter of the law A very convenient excuse, which is precisely why I don't find it convincing. Please spare me your patronizing explanations of Terms of Service; having already studied law they're not very impressive. OK? It's not zero-sum just because some are happy and some are sad. Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  >A very convenient excuse, which is precisely why I don't find it convincing. Please spare me your patronizing explanations of Terms of Service; having already studied law they're not very impressive. Do you have an argument that's not "it was unfair because it was technically illegal and Lyft probably didn't like it"? Maybe there'd be a more impressive answer if you could offer a more impressive proposition. >Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here. This is pure fantasy. Win-loss is an unavoidable fact of any competition. You are competing because you are trying to get the the same limited resource (in this case, the market for a ride-hailing app). That's what makes it a competition. Giving up because you don't like competing is the same as a loss. The entity that gets that portion of the resource won, and the entity that didn't lost. A loss doesn't have to be wholly unprofitable, but it's still a loss. You have arbitrarily defined all competitions as fundamentally zero-sum. You say they're zero-sum by definition: the definitions I know of win means that someone has gained something and loss means that someone has either failed to gain something they wanted or lost something they had (not necessarily in proportion to the person who won). This is only zero-sum if you believe that all resources could be utilized equally well in anyone's hands. This is not even communistic or socialistic where a central authority decides the appropriate way to allocate resources, it's just anarchy.
- halomru 10y ago
  >Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here. Only in a very restricted framework. If one side goes out of business and one side only makes a minor gain (and lots of remaining competition exists), that is obviously not zero sum from any perspective

anigbrowl 10y ago

There's a lot of stuff that is technically illegal, but we'd all be paralyzed if we followed the letter of the law A very convenient excuse, which is precisely why I don't find it convincing. Please spare me your patronizing explanations of Terms of Service; having already studied law they're not very impressive. OK? It's not zero-sum just because some are happy and some are sad. Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here.

cookiecaper 10y ago
>A very convenient excuse, which is precisely why I don't find it convincing. Please spare me your patronizing explanations of Terms of Service; having already studied law they're not very impressive. Do you have an argument that's not "it was unfair because it was technically illegal and Lyft probably didn't like it"? Maybe there'd be a more impressive answer if you could offer a more impressive proposition. >Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here. This is pure fantasy. Win-loss is an unavoidable fact of any competition. You are competing because you are trying to get the the same limited resource (in this case, the market for a ride-hailing app). That's what makes it a competition. Giving up because you don't like competing is the same as a loss. The entity that gets that portion of the resource won, and the entity that didn't lost. A loss doesn't have to be wholly unprofitable, but it's still a loss. You have arbitrarily defined all competitions as fundamentally zero-sum. You say they're zero-sum by definition: the definitions I know of win means that someone has gained something and loss means that someone has either failed to gain something they wanted or lost something they had (not necessarily in proportion to the person who won). This is only zero-sum if you believe that all resources could be utilized equally well in anyone's hands. This is not even communistic or socialistic where a central authority decides the appropriate way to allocate resources, it's just anarchy.
halomru 10y ago
>Win-loss outcomes are zero-sum by definition. I don't see this discussion going anywhere productive from here. Only in a very restricted framework. If one side goes out of business and one side only makes a minor gain (and lots of remaining competition exists), that is obviously not zero sum from any perspective